When it comes to creating strong Google Ads campaigns, your Quality Score can make all the difference in how well your ads perform. Whether you’re a seasoned advertiser or are just starting out, you must understand Quality Scores if you want to create successful digital marketing or advertising campaigns.
For those of you who are new to this, we’ve got your back. This blog will explain what a quality score is, why they’re so crucial and most importantly, how you can optimise it to get better results for your campaigns.
What is a Google Ads Quality Score?
Quality Scores were released in 2005, but they have come a long way since their introduction. To start off basic, Quality Score is Google’s way of rating the quality and relevance of both your keywords and your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads. It will be a numeric score between 1 and 10 (10 being the highest), that reflects how well your keywords, ads and landing pages align with what users are commonly searching for.
The Importance of Quality Score
Quality Scores are integral to the success of your Google Ads campaigns as they define your:
- Ad Ranking & Position: Your Quality Score directly affects your ad’s position in search results. High-scoring ads will rank higher, while low-scoring ones will fall down the results.
- Cost-Per-Click (CPC): Higher quality scores can help to lower your CPC and save your budget. Google rewards advertisers who provide good experiences for users by lowering costs.
- Visibility: Better scores can also boost the visibility of your ads, thus increasing the chances you have to attract more customers.
How Quality Scores Are Measured
Google assesses the quality of your ads and ranks them by key factors that impact the user experience. Basically, the more relevant and engaging your ads are, the more Google will bump them up the ranks.
The 3 key components Google looks at are:
- Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR): This is the likelihood of users actually clicking on your ads when they pop up.
- Ad Relevance: This is the measure of how well your content matches user search intent and how well the keywords in your content match the search query.
- Landing Page Experience: This is how Google evaluates the behaviour of users who click on your ads and how well they engage with the content on your landing page.
Monitoring Your Quality Score
Consistent monitoring is essential for any digital marketing or advertising strategy and your Google ads are no different. Fortunately for you, Google makes this really simple through your Google Ads account.
To check your Quality Score simply:
- Open your Google Ads account and navigate to the “Keywords” section.
- Then click on the columns icon on the upper right-hand side of the table.
- Finally, select “Modify columns for keywords” and select “Quality Score.” This will allow you to check and modify your keywords and ads as necessary.
How to Improve Your Quality Score
Now that you know the basic essentials of Quality Scores, the last thing to cover is how to improve them. This is arguably the most important thing to know about Quality Scores or any other digital marketing tool for that matter.
Here are a few ways you can improve your Quality Score:
Keyword Research
The best place to start is with your keywords. Your keywords will guide your ads, so it’s important to conduct thorough research to make sure you’re targeting the best keywords and phrases for your target audience and product or services.
The best practice is to try to create and use a range of keywords including long-tail keywords, specific product names, and more generic ones to funnel your target audience to your landing page. Focus on relevant keywords that your audience and Google will clearly understand as this will help you rank higher and push your content for the most relevant search queries.
Compelling Ad Copy
Write engaging ad copy that speaks directly to the user’s query and search intent. Highlight the key benefits and unique selling points of your product or service and filter in a few of your top-performing keywords. This has two major benefits:
- Viewers will clearly see and understand how your ad and business relate to their search query.
- Google will perceive a higher ad relevance, which will help boost your Quality Score.
Optimise Landing Pages
And remember, your landing page experience does impact your quality score, so you need to make sure that it’s relevant to your ad copy and provides a seamless and engaging experience for your users. You can do this by:
- Keeping the messaging relevant and consistent.
- Using the most relevant URL for each ad/ad group.
- Monitoring your bounce rate and lowering it.
- Ensuring it loads quickly and is mobile-friendly.
Negative Keywords
It’s also easy for your ads to get misplaced online and show up for searches that they aren’t relevant for. This can waste your advertising budget and skew your results. To keep your ads in just the searches that they’re relevant to and get the results you want implement negative keywords.
Stay on top of this by monitoring the search queries your ads show up for each week. Keep excluding any irrelevant searches by adding them as negative keywords.
Ad Extensions
One of the best things about the constant advancements in technology is that you can now use technology to improve your campaigns and quality scores. Google has a range of ad extensions that can provide additional information to help improve your ads and make them more appealing your your target audience. While Ad extensions don’t directly impact your Quality Score, they can increase your CTR, which in turn can help boost your Quality Score.
Quality Over Quantity
Like most things in life, quality is always more important than quantity. It’s more important to focus on a smaller set of high-quality, relevant keywords than a large list full of irrelevant ones. So, while it can be tempting to fill your ads with as many keywords as possible, it’s best to avoid the temptation and just include the high-quality ones sparingly. Google doesn’t like keyword stuffing and will not reward it.
Regular Monitoring
The key to constant and consistently high results is to constantly and consistently monitor your results and make improvements where possible and necessary. By regularly monitoring your campaigns you’ll be able to catch any issues early and optimise them quickly before they waste your budget.
Leaving underperforming ads sitting is essentially a money pit, keep them working for you and you’ll consistently receive results.
Improve Your Google Ads Quality Score Through Optimisation
Optimising your Google Ads quality score is something that you need to give sufficient time and effort to. It’s not something you can just do once and forget about for the foreseeable future, you need to monitor it regularly and make adjustments to keep your ads performing as you want them to.
So, get started on your Quality Score optimisation journey today and watch your Google Ads campaigns soar.
